The Rants & Rambles of A Grumpy Old Dude

Flash Fiction #67

There’s a hole in our wooden bucket, dear wife.
Then fix it, dear husband!
With what shall I fix it?
With wood, dear husband!
How shall I cut the wood?
With the axe, husband!
The axe is too dull.
Then sharpen it!
But how shall I sharpen it?
On the stone!
With what shall I wet it?
With water, DEAR husband!!
How shall I get water?In a bucket!!
There’s a hole in the bucket…..

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Blessed are those who run around in circles, for they shall be called Big Wheels.

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Neither original nor fiction, but a pastiche of quotes to show the frustrations of modern commercial life. First, all due credit to Robert Heinlein, for his vaguely worded mouse reference which means that, loosely translated, the higher you rise within any organization, the more numerous and strange your problems become, and the fewer of you there are to solve them.

Secondly, apologies to Harry Belafonte for slightly rewording his Caribbean ‘lazy-husband song’, which shows how one problem flows into the next, and finally back to the starting point, with no resolution.

And lastly, to the prolific philosopher, Anonymous, whose apt quote shows how we so often have to run harder and faster just to stay in the same place, chasing, but never quite reaching, solutions which are forever just out of reach ahead of us.

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Go to Rochelle’s Addicted to Purple site and use her Wednesday photo as a prompt to write a complete 100 word story.

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14 thoughts on “Flash Fiction #67”

Who you callin’ Liza, Willis? 😉
Nobody’s as old as me, but you must have turned a few calendar pages to remember that song. I saw Belafonte sing it on the Ed Sullivan Show (in black and white) about 1960. 😯

Yay indeed! I took the ‘Ouroboros’ title from his ‘All You Zombies’ short story. It was the first time I had run into the reference. Actually, I can’t guarantee the mouse reference is his, but befuddled memory says it is. 😆

What a great idea. I didn’t even know that this song was known in English, or sung by Harry Belafonte. It’s a very old German folk/children’s song (and probably in many other countries, too) called, “Ein Loch ist im Eimer.”